Tuesday, April 14, 2015

Scattershooting Clinton and Rubio and Christie and Carson

What could we expect from a Hillary presidency? My guess is that it
would be Wall Street–friendly, militarized and secretive — though
seasoned with mostly empty rhetoric about uplift, community and
inclusion. It would do little to address polarization and rot. In fact
it would be a perfect embodiment of polarization and rot. There will be
strenuous efforts over the next year and a half to argue otherwise, but
they will convince no one but loyalists.

The newly minted GOP presidential candidate made clear in Fox News
and NPR interviews that he’ll leave the Senate when his term ends in
January 2017, and not reserve his options to run for re-election in
Florida if his White House bid doesn’t work out.

“I don’t have a Plan B to pivot back to the Senate race. I intend to
be the nominee,” Rubio said Monday night on Fox News, shortly after
declaring his candidacy. “And that’s why I think it’s important for us
to have a strong candidate in Florida who’s out there working now. If I
went around talking about how I would pivot back to the Senate race if
things didn’t work out, our best candidates may not run.”

He's in for the same reason Ted Cruz is: to be the vice-presidential nominee of his party in 2016, and/or another crack at the title in 2020. I'll take even-money odds on a Rubio-Castro VP debate in October of next year. Two actually; one in English and one in Spanish.

-- No, Chris Christie is not bold. He's incredibly arrogant, exceptionally devious, highly obnoxious, and still morbidly obese two years after having his stomach banded. He remains the nation's most at-risk-of-mortal-cardiac-event politician, bar none.

-- Dr. Ben Carson will (allegedly) announce his campaign for president in his hometown of Detroit next month. No one really knows why he is running, especially now that Wayne LaPierre of the NRA inadvertently shot down Carson's only plausible rationale.